Stories give us wisdom which is better than knowledge and more useful than information. In fact, I’ve come to believe that story is the way we capture wisdom and hold onto it. With that in mind, let me share a few thoughts . . . Truth gives us no comfort in time of trouble and no sense of direction. For that, you need good stories about how others handled hard times. Good stories bend the details but always tell the truth. That’s...

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When I said lots of people think stories are just stories and not always true, I happened to also sneeze. Cherie Karo Schwartz’s comeback was a Yiddish proverb “Sneeze on the truth.” Families, she told me, are like the 33 Chilean miners recently rescued from half a mile underground. To survive, they organized themselves. They designated parts of the mine for sleeping, eating and other purposes. They picked a leader. They...

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I have a friend who got a PhD based on a thesis about wisdom. Where do you find it? Can it be taught? She traveled worldwide, Lapland, Kenya, Japan, deep south of US, etc. asking who was considered wise in varying cultures and then interviewing those people. She was looking for a commonality. What made people wise? What made others call someone wise? No surprise, none of the people she interviewed considered himself/herself wise, not even...

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“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” –William James And who isn’t wise enough to gloss over a few things when we tell our stories? Ah, but where is the line between applying a little wisdom and telling a story that never happened? I will confess that I loved the movie Julie and Julia, about Julia Child and a cooking blog by Julie Powell. I liked the idea that the movie was based on real events....

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Oh, the wisdom of stories!!! You can talk about good and evil, pontificate about ying and yang, try to explain the id and the ego. OR you can tell a story. This one is thanks to Carol Grever and her wonderful blog http://www.straightspouseconnection.com/2009/03/the-fight-inside-me.html Also check out her books and film http://www.carolgrever.com    A grandmother is teaching her little granddaughter.  She says, “Two wolves are fighting...

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